Before I heat treat the blade that I'm making I thought that I would like to engrave my name on it in asian form. One kanji form I have found looks like this:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_R-BA0-S2VKk/TYJtfAoBoFI/AAAAAAAAAFo/t1lSf0X_wTs/Spike%20kanji.gif

Does anyone know any Japanese people who might know if this is "Spike"?

But you got the kanji from somewhere, right? It's probably Chinese pronunciation.

SpikeC

03-18-2011, 09:50 PM

That is the case, it is chinese. Maybe I should incorporate some lead in there somewhere?

DrNaka

03-20-2011, 11:29 AM

Do you know that there is no lonely consonant in Japanese (other than "n")?
You can never write Spike in Japanese letters.
The katakana スパイク will read Su-pa-i-ku and it will be a 4 morae word.

Many do not know about mora so I will make a link to wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_%28linguistics%29

SpikeC

03-20-2011, 05:49 PM

Thank you DrNaka, the wiki article was interesting, however I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?

spaceconvoy

03-20-2011, 07:49 PM

English to Japanese will always be an approximate transcription, as opposed to a direct transliteration (see here if you want to geek out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration)). You can't write "Cornelius" or "Spike" directly, but you can write "Kouniriasu" and "Supaiku". Which, depending on your point of view, is either completely different or basically the same thing.

SpikeC

03-20-2011, 07:55 PM

Well, the main thing was to see how my engraving would work on steel, and that was successful. The fact that what I engraved was basically gibberish does not detract from the quality of the engraving itself. I will be making more knives, so the next one will be something else, butt it remains to be seen what!

DrNaka

03-21-2011, 12:49 AM

Thank you DrNaka, the wiki article was interesting, however I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?

I see.
I realize that you "I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! "
Otherwise you would not made the question:"Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?"

The answer to this question is no.
But if you do not matter of same pronunciation コルネリウス or コーネリウス would be the katakana.